What could possibly be better than having a Fairy Godmother? Having a REAL one, of course!

When my dad was in grad school and my parents lived in Married Student Housing, they lived upstairs or downstairs (I forget who was where) from Klaus & Karen Sitte, and they became fast friends. The kind of prank-playing friends who would build a whole snowman on the doorstep so their friends couldn’t open their door and get out.

The kind of friends who would eat Thanksgiving dinner together every year, and would keep sharing Thanksgivings for more than half a century (still counting) without missing a one! My parents moved from Montana to Idaho, just weeks before my arrival, but they continued to get together with the Sittes every Thanksgiving, alternating years hosting. The Sittes had two boys, a couple years older than my sister & me, the perfect distribution for acting out the Narnia books when we all got together for those long Thanksgiving-holiday weekends.

It’s one of the things I have long admired about my mother, that she forms lasting friendships with people she meets. She gets to know people on her travels, and gives them nicknames, and corresponds with them, and meets up with them for new trips. Her Canadian friend “Joan Junior” (to distinguish her from my Grandma Joan) she met when she & Grandma went to the Girl Scout/Girl Guide Center in Mexico when I was young. Mother and Junior visited each other and took trips together for decades. Her friend “Debbie the Badger” (because she hails from Wisconsin State with a badger mascot) she met when she and my son took a sea-kayaking trip in Mexico, and she & Debbie have visited each other and taken half a dozen trips together since.

She & the Sittes take several trips together every year, sometimes in combination with Debbie the Badger or other friends. Mostly they explore the western U.S. & Canada in their RVs (my mom has a Pleasureway mini-motorhome, and they pull a small trailer), with their kayaks and bikes on the back—but they also venture farther afield, to New York City a couple years ago, this spring to Scotland & Ireland… They periodically come through to stay at our RV park on their road trips, and when the park is full we just park them behind our house, and I can look out the kitchen window in the morning to see my mom’s little rig with its cheery blue kayak.

This coming March the Sittes are renting a place across the street from my mom’s California winter-home, staying for a month. She’s already planning their escapades! (I think we should warn California.)

My mom & my sister & I have a deal, that whenever one of us travels, we send photos to each other, every day of the trip. And every year, as the photos come in from campsites or castles, I’m grateful that my mom has my godparents in her life. I might just have to plan a California trip in March.